


Siege

by Ashling



Category: Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Diaspora, F/M, Magic, Trick or Treat 2018, ride or die - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-11 07:08:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16471058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: “Either you meant it when you asked me to marry you,” she says, “or you didn’t.”Love and loyalty, war and witchery, Nick and Rachel.





	Siege

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elegantstupidity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/gifts).



> To elegantstupidity. Thank you for the prompt so much! It has allowed me to wallow in my feelings in ways I had never anticipated.
> 
> I'm Chinese diaspora with no language skills, which means I know I'm probably butchering some of this, but I did my best and I put my heart into it, which is all I can do.

Rachel creeps up to the tall mahogany door and presses her ear to it.

“—and that is understandable, but I am not leaving.” Eleanor’s voice rings with all the steel Rachel has come to expect, and yet there’s a tremor of emotion there that she has never heard before.

“Mum, I’m not asking you to leave. You’re not listening to me.”

“This is my home.”

“I know.”

“There is more here than just a building. There are more things here than just the—” And here she says a word in a language Rachel doesn’t know. It’s not Mandarin or Cantonese, and it’s none of the East Asian languages Rachel can kind of recognize, either: Japanese, Korean.

“I know!”

“Then leave me to my preparations!”

“I’m not leaving you!”

Silence. There is a strong wind in the house that should not be there. Even with windows open, the current of it is so strong that Rachel’s hair lifts for just a moment.

“Very well,” Eleanor says quietly. “That is your decision.”

“I need to gather a few things from upstairs. And I want to leave Rachel a voicemail.”

“I will see you in the garden.”

Footsteps. Rachel backpedals and starts walking as fast as she can, but she’s still only halfway down the hall by the time Nick closes the door behind him. He calls her name, stares aghast when she turns to face him.

“Alistair was supposed to take you on the helicopter half an hour ago!”

Rachel wants to smile at the idea of Alistair Cheng taking her anywhere at all, but the color has drained from Nick’s face. She takes a tentative step forward. “I’m not leaving you, either.”

Nick’s jaw tightens, eyes hurt. It’s like she’s reached out and hit him, that face, and without even thinking about it she crosses the distance between them.

“You don’t even know what this is,” he murmurs.

“I know enough.” She cups his cheek. “I know there’s a reason Singapore has more billionaires per square foot than any other island. I know this kind of money doesn’t come without blood too, and that this kind of power brings generational enemies. I know you were born to this. I know you don’t deserve it. But here we are.”

“Not _we_. Not ‘here we are.’ This has nothing to do with you.” But he covers her hand with his own, and Rachel knows she has won.

“Either you meant it when you asked me to marry you,” she says, “or you didn’t.”

 

 

 

 

On their way upstairs, hand in hand, Nick pauses only once, to take down a pair of swords hanging over a mantelpiece. The green and gold cloth wrapping the ivory handles seems ever so slightly tattered, but when Rachel takes one and yanks at the handle, the blade scrapes against the sheath and rings out metallic and fresh.

 

 

 

 

Nick’s changing in the bathroom, and Rachel is wrestling down her suitcase from atop the armoire. It’s almost domestic, for just a moment. It’s almost like getting ready for a dinner party, except that she keeps both swords close at hand.

“What are we expecting?” she says. “And when?”

“In around fifteen minutes, the Kwongs are coming. They’ll send mercenaries, first. The best. For the first wave, probably animals sent out to get the lay of the land, to find any escape routes, any ways in.”

“And are there?”

“Dozens. But we’re defending the gardens, so it’s primarily the water and two main entrances. And the air, if we're very unlucky.”

“God, I hope they don’t have fenghuang,” Rachel mutters, unzipping her suitcase and surveying its contents.

“What do you know about them?”

“Enough.”

There is a pause short enough that it would be barely perceptible to anyone but Rachel. Then Nick says, “How much do you know about magic, exactly?”

“More than enough.”

Nick comes into the bedroom wearing nothing but a pair of light gold trousers. His shoulders shine as if they’re wet. They’re not.

“What does ‘more than enough’ mean?” he says.

Rachel decides to give him just a moment to rethink the path he’s going down. He has absolutely no right to be annoyed at her, not now.

“With an ass like that, who needs belts, right?” she says. She’s naked, which helps her case.

He bites his lip. “Guess we’ve both been keeping secrets.” 

“I was going to tell you before the wedding,” she says.

“Right.” He returns to the bedroom.

Rachel puts on a sports bra, because underwire isn’t good enough for a battle; lacy underwear, because what the hell; a black silk blouse her mother gave her, for good luck; and sports leggings, socks, and runners, because if she’s gonna die, she wants to die comfortable. She belts the sword on top.

 

 

 

 

In the kitchen, Nick is making some kind of concoction with mortar and pestle, a mix of fresh herbs and dried roots that emits a terrifying smell. Rachel doesn’t recognize half the things he’s putting in the mix, but she has a decent idea of what he’s making. For her part, she’s collecting a few things in the big plastic bag she used to wrap her runners on the flight there: eggs, a wooden spatula, salt, several rolls of haw flakes, raw ginger. They move around each other, collecting the things they need in a tense but intimate silence.

Finally, Nick puts the green paste in a mug, and adds hot water.

“I didn’t know you were into juicing,” Rachel says.

Nick smiles tightly. “It’s gonna be easier if I just show you this,” he says. “I get that it’s a little weird. Don’t be alarmed.”

“I hate to tell you, Nick, but I think we’re gonna die. I’m not sure how much more alarmed I can get.” She gestures at him. “Go for it.”

The water was boiling only minutes ago, but he closes his eyes, tips his head back, and chugs the whole thing. At first, Rachel thinks there’s only some kind of light caught on the movement of his throat, but then it spreads down his chest and arms in pulsing golden light, leaving behind traceries of things she can’t put a name to, things that still faintly ring on some real creatures. She’s almost sure she can make out a cobra coiled round his bicep. When the whole drink is done, the tattoos remain.

“My Poa Poa was Iban,” he says, by way of explanation. Eyes still closed.

She reaches out to touch, to trace, and he says, “Careful.”

His skin’s as hot as a car left out in the sun, but he doesn’t sweat.

“All right,” Rachel says. “Color me impressed.”

And that’s before he opens his eyes.

She has seen them this color before, when he’s squinting into the setting sun, brown turned to honey, except here in the kitchen they’ve both been working by the light of just one overhead light, a harsh artificial white thing. This time, his eyes are lit from the inside.

“Hi,” she says softly.

He smiles, and for a moment it’s clear he’s forgotten everything else; for a moment, he looks just like a little boy with a winning science project, proud and excited to share this with her. At the same time, she doesn’t need to touch him to feel the power flowing through him.

“Your turn,” he says.

“Not yet.”

 

 

 

 

Eleanor is waiting for them in the garden, and at the sight of her, Rachel has to stop herself from smiling. It’s not the clothes; her embroidered mint green robe and matching dress underneath seem perfectly suited to one of her Bible studies. It’s not the expression on her face; on the contrary, she seems as mildly detached and intensely intelligent as ever. It’s not even her elaborate hair; the loops and bun-like arrangements, studded and draped with all manner of silver ornaments, provokes more awe in Rachel than anything else, because it would take Rachel a good two weeks to figure that stuff out on her own. No. It’s the rings. On both hands, every finger except the thumb is wearing at least one ring with a massive jewel. In the twilight darkness, her hands glint a cold rainbow. It’s all the strength Eleanor has, all the power, all the viciousness, with no silk to mask it. Rachel has liked Eleanor, respected Eleanor, before this, but when she sees those rings, the rush of pride overwhelms her and turns into something else, a real affection.

It’s an affection she sees reflected in Eleanor’s eyes when Eleanor looks at her son and her future daughter-in-law standing side by side. But all she says is: “You take the west entrance; I will take the east.”

Eleanor adds nothing about love or luck, death or destiny. She takes the second sword from Nick’s hands, kisses his forehead, and strides away through the lush greenery until she is lost to sight.

Just for a moment, Nick looks a little lost. Rachel takes his hand.

“Hey,” she says gently. “Guess what? It’s my turn now.”

He manages a smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

There is a boundary between walkable lawn and the bank of the decorative scream, made of delicately carved wooden panels. Rachel vaults this, then wades in till the water’s at knee height. Rummaging around in her plastic bag, she takes the small, sharp knife, and cuts off several lengths of string; then she ties the eggs together, punctures them each on the ends with the tiniest holes. When she drops them in the water with a murmur, the bob up and down, but float in a perfect triangle, equidistant from each other. She cuts the ginger in half, scrapes a little sliver, puts it in her mouth raw, and bites down. She doesn’t try to not make a face at the strong taste; this is her least favorite part. She drops both halves in the water. They land perfectly in the middle of the triangle.

And then she pulls out the round blue twelve ounce Royal Dansk Danish Butter Cookies tin. Of course, it’s full of sewing supplies: needles, thread, one of those red tomato pincushions. But there’s also a very small blue item in it, which she holds firmly between thumb and forefinger and shakes hard, once, like it’s a wet towel she’s trying to snap. Suddenly, she’s holding an entirely different Royal Dansk Danish Butter Cookies tin. And there’s a ton of things in this one, among them: dried corn, a can of Spam, inexplicably fresh green onion. She drops various measures of a dozen foods in the water between the eggs, but when she gets to the jar of minced garlic, she pours the whole thing in.

“That much garlic?” Nick murmurs. “Is this a recipe for fire breath?”

“Don’t be silly,” Rachel says. “They just like a lot of flavor.”

“They?”

“Just watch.”

Rachel stirs the water with the wooden spatula, and begins to sing. “Zhou sen…” It’s a waking-up song for kids, like a lullaby in reverse. A short verse, but one she repeats over and over for 88 seconds as the water between the eggs begins to boil.

Then the first egg bursts open. Out pops a scaly little head, and then after it slithers a long red body, somehow uncoiling to a dragon about the size of a daschund, little horns shiny and sharp, whiskers dragging after it as it paddles around in the water, snapping at the bits of food there.

“Hey,” Rachel says sternly. The dragon looks up at her. “Leave some spam for your brothers.”

The dragon huffs. But he does as he’s told.

Nick is silent for a long time, as the other two eggs also crack open and the other two dragons emerge. Finally, he says: “Do they have names?”

“Can’t tell you their true names. But they have nicknames.” Rachel points at the first one. “That one is Salty, because he’s temperamental and he likes Spam and bacon and pork belly the most. That one is Opal, because he’s got the shiniest scales. And that one is Pinkie Pie, because I was really young when I first conjured him and I loved My Little Pony. In retrospect, maybe mom shouldn’t have introduced me to witchery so young. But we had a lot of work to get done.”

“I see,” Nick says. There’s really not much else to say. One of them crawls out of the water, towards him. He can’t be sure which one it is—to be honest, he couldn’t tell the difference in their scale shininess, or size, or really anything else—but he thinks it’s Salty. Maybe-Salty crawls across the grass to him, then onto his bare foot, then up his trouser leg, the little claws digging in like a cat’s. He looks mildly down at it and holds his ground. He offers it his hand.

Maybe-Salty bites down on his finger in a surprisingly delicate prickle of teeth.

“Hi there,” he says. Maybe-Salty huffs at him.

When he looks up, Rachel is unwrapping one of the rolls of haw flakes.

“What does that do?” Nick says.

“Nothing. I just hate the taste of the ginger. You want one?”

Nick thinks about it. They have less than five minutes until the first wave arrives. There’s really not much else to do. “Yeah.”

She tosses him one. He tries to unwrap the pink paper, then gets impatient and tears through both it and the gold paper underneath with his nails. The first reddish disk is sweet and fruity on his tongue, an instant dose of nostalgia of childhood. “I always liked haw flakes.”

“Me too. They taste like Christmas,” Rachel says.

“Why?”

“Oh shit,” Rachel says, mouth half-full. She draws her sword. Nick turns just in time to see the first stone lion thundering through the east entrance.

 

 

 

 

There’s no time to think, no time to act. Nick barely remembers anything; his magic doesn’t work that way. He barely sees, his eyes are so full of light. He stomps his heels hard into the grass, wriggles his toes till he finds damp soil, and reaches. His hand closes around air.

Rachel shouts a warning, and Nick curses as he rolls out of the way of the beast. When he looks back over his shoulder, Rachel is ducking down into the water, one dragon on each shoulder, and suddenly a precise surge of water like a glistening fist punches up out of the stream and tosses the stone lion clear into the second story of the house, where it shatters on the white balcony. For a moment, the balcony gleams with traceries of calligraphy; then it returns to normal, pristine but for the bits of stone lying about.

Panting, Nick scrambles to his feet.

“Salty can stay with you,” Rachel shouts, over the sound of another incoming stone lion. “I think he likes you.”

Nick remembers, this time, to say the spell before he reaches for the spear. When he throws it, it hits the lion square between the eyes and shatters, but as soon as the broken wood hits the earth, it sprouts and grows, quick as light, till vines have encased the lion. They writhe over and around it like snakes, constricting until finally it shatters into lumps of harmless stone on the lawn. Only then, light fading from his eyes, does Nick notice that Salty has sprung onto his shoulder and is digging those little claws in to keep on.

“Are you sure you don’t want him for help?” Nick shouts back.

“He’s not much use this far from the sea.”

Nick would love to know what exactly that means, but a storm is gathering overhead and the next enemy in through the entrance isn’t a stone lion, it’s a man with a bow and arrow.

“Hey!” Nick shouts. “Didn’t I tutor you in precalc?” to which the man shoots him.

The arrowhead bounces off, but when it lands on the grass, it leaves a scorching mark, and Nick can feel the energy depleted from the wards in his tattoos.

He barely has time to mutter, “Goddammit, Jake,” before the battle goes straight to hell.

 

 

 

 

Rachel can barely keep up. At first, she has Opal raining down hail the size of baseballs on their enemies, but that’s not targeted enough, so pretty soon she switches him to purely making it pour so Pinkie Pie can do his job. Pinkie Pie in the meantime is having a ball, smacking with waves or drowning as the situation demands, and Rachel has her hands full playing last defense, making sure no enemy can sneak past them. The sword, it turns out, is a beauty to behold; it rings out high, clear notes when it has taken a life, which, while morbid, also helps her know when one challenge has been taken care of. The one clear moment of absolute panic comes when she sees a witch charging in on a horse with her cavalry sword raised high, chanting in a way that makes the sword’s blade go molten and so bright Rachel can barely stand to look at it. Nick is in the horse’s way, wrestling with some spotted panther, bleeding from an arrow strong enough to break through his wards, an arrows that’s still stuck through his left arm. Rachel turns to Pinkie Pie, but said dragon is fully occupied knocking around a pair of mace-wielding mercenaries.

Reaching into her bag, Rachel finds one last thing: salt. As she runs forward, she opens the container and wings her arm wide so that a spray of salt arcs through the air between Nick and the horse; at that, Salty rears his head back and breathes out, hard, and suddenly all along the salt in the air a great cloud of steam rises up. Horse and rider fall to the ground, the witch scalded so badly Rachel can see pink flesh where skin should be, the horse thrashing. Nick thrusts the panther towards the fallen horse, in time for those hooves to score a direct hit on the panther’s head. Rachel thinks she might recognize the fallen witch from a charity banquet three months back, but she runs her through without a second thought and turns to offer Nick a hand up.

When she hauls him to his feet, he stands as close to her as he can, staring into her eyes, his own eyes darkening to a familiar brown just for a moment. Rachel forgets everything: the taste of blood, the ache in her bruised back, the wet strands of hair floating distractingly around her face. Completely unbidden, a single thought floats up to the surface.

 _Mine,_ she thinks, throat tight. She doesn't say it, but he nods anyways. He understands. 

There isn't time for words. There are more coming.

 

 

 

 

There are more coming and so quickly that Rachel has abandoned finesse and is instead pouring out all her energy into defenses, massive waves that knock everything and everyone to the ground but leave Nick standing. She lets him do the killing and hopes against hope that she hasn’t already lost an enemy, missed something out of the corner of the eye that’s gonna sneak up behind them and kill them.

In the end, it’s an obvious threat that gets her, an armored swordsman that stays low to the ground and stabs into it, holding on against the waves she sends. She shattered her own sword five minutes ago on the back of a cursed shield and has been surviving on mostly speed in ducking ever since. This time, though, the swordsman is fast, dodges one of the dragons and cuts the tail of another. There’s nothing left in Rachel’s bag but she did Little League as a kid. She did Little League as a kid and she throws a stone as hard as she can, catches the swordsman square in the head, watches him fall over with just a little relief, and then screams when the leopard jumps her.

She expects teeth. No teeth come. Instead, there’s a crackle and a light so bright she presses her hand against her closed eyes. When it subsides, the leopard slumps onto her, all burnt smell and wet fur and she shoves it off, sits up, and sees lightning arcing from sky to earth in a dozen different places, a dozen different enemies.

“Fuck me,” Nick breathes. He’s lying ten feet away, arrow still through his arm but otherwise unharmed, and Rachel crawls to him because it seems the thing to do. She puts her hand on his chest, panting for breath. He interlaces their fingers. 

"Look," he says. Something is descending from the sky through the dark clouds. With a murmur to Opal, Rachel parts the clouds a little, letting a few rays of moonlight illuminate the graceful form of—

“Astrid!”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Don't fuck with the Young family.
> 
> 2\. Did you really think that immigrant grandmas all had Royal Dansk Danish Butter Cookies tins as their sewing kits for no reason? IT'S MAGIC. THEY'RE PART OF A COVEN.  
> 
> _Royal Dansk Danish Butter Cookies tin witchery is the real immigrant solidarity._


End file.
